Psychiatry and Parapsychology: The Consummation of an Uncertain Romance

This
presentation will attempt to assess where we have been, where we are, and where
we are likely to go with regard to the interrelationship between psychiatry and
What was formerly called psychical research, now known in the West as
parapsychology.

WHERE WE WERE

The Remote Past

Two
recent review articles (Ullman, 1974a, 1974b) trace the history of the kinds of
engagements and disengagements that occurred between the group of scholars that
came together in the last two decades of the past century and the early years
of this one and the medical men of the day who specialized in nervous
disorders. The founders (in 1882) of the (British) Society for Psychical
Research exhibited a lively interest in the exciting discoveries reported by
those investigators (Braid, Bernheim, Liébeault) who were trying to establish
the validity and significance of hypnosis and the remarkable phenomena
associated with it. Hypnosis was only one source of rapidly accumulating
evidence that there are important unseen dimensions to human personality. Hysteria,
multiple personality, and even paranoia were scrutinized and studied not only
for the light they shed on the unconscious or subconscious, but also as to
whether or not supranormal faculties played a role in the etiology and
symptomatology of the various syndromes. T. Weir Mitchell, Morton Prince and
Pierre Janet lent their time and prestige to clinical investigations of this
kind whereas theoreticians like William James and F. W. H. Myers engaged in
integrative efforts designed to map out human personality on a scale ample
enough to accommodate the new yield of information concerning the range of
man's psychical as well as psychological abilities. Myers (1903) led the way
with the publication of his massive two-volume study, which not only summarized
data from a wide variety of sources but also outlined the case for survival
based on the evidence for the existence of human faculties that could operate
apart from and independent of the body. While Myers' survival thesis itself is
arguable, the book was for psychical research what Freud's Interpretation of Dreams was for the
future of psychoanalysis. It brought together facts from diverse sources that
had to be looked at in their interconnectedness and to be housed in some kind
of unified theoretical structure. What both Myers and Freud did was to study
altered and deviant states of consciousness in an effort to shed light on
consciousness itself and its counterpart, the realm of the unconsciousness.

Therein
the comparison ends; Myers died before he could complete his book, while
Freud's monumental volume on dreams marked the beginning of his effort to bring
the new science of psychoanalysis into being. Just as Myers took note of
Freud's work, Freud took note of the existence of psi phenomena and of the
societies organized to deal seriously with them (Jones, 1957, v3). Freud,
however, faced the task of establishing the respectability of psychoanalysis
itself. His own intellectual honesty and curiosity led him to flirt with the
field by way of seriously entertaining the possibility that telepathy existed
and that telepathically perceived content might undergo transformation in the
unconscious. He came up against sharp opposition from his colleagues, notably
Jones, and this undoubtedly tempered the extent of his own engagement with the
subject.

Freud
and the generation of analysts that followed sought to establish a scientific
basis for both understanding and treating mental illness. Part of the price
that was paid for sanitizing the subject matter of psychiatry was to dissect it
away from any occult connections. This was nowhere more evident than in the
responses of Freudian analysts to any of their colleagues who showed an
inclination to take the subject of telepathy seriously. Their efforts were met
with pejorative psychoanalytic jargon to the effect that such thinking was
regressive in character and evidence of an unresolved striving for omnipotence
(Ullman, 1974a, 1974b).

The
early thrust of psychiatric leadership in the field of psychical research was thus
aborted and what came into being in its stead was a movement analogous in its
own way to what we have said about psychoanalysis. The approach to research in
this area established by J. B. Rhine sought to transform what had been known as
psychical research into the new science of parapsychology. Since science with a
capital S requires quantification, laboratory controls, and repeatability, this
was the order of the day. Psychical research in the course of becoming
parapsychology was subjected to a process of objectification that, at least
initially, obscured the subjective soil out of which it arose. This splitting
of subject and object was unfortunately predicated on a dualistic framework
that carried with it religious and idealistic overtones. From the point of view
of history, what might have been twins - or at least siblings - were born and
reared in separation from each other. Commenting on this, Weir Mitchell (1939)
wrote:

With the general adoption of analytical
methods in the treatment of psychoneurotic illness the interrelations of
psychical research and psychotherapeutics became less obvious, and at the
present time we cannot say that the researches of one department of knowledge
have much bearing on those of the other. But there will always remain some
common ground - the realm of the unexplained - in which discoveries may be made
in one field of investigation or the other. That there is a realm of the
unexplained in the history of mental healing cannot be denied (p183).

All
that follows bears witness to the slow but gradually increasing momentum of the
effort to bring the person and his capacity for experiencing and existing in
various states of consciousness back into the picture as we move further into
the strange and puzzling world of the paranormal.

The
Intermediate Past

A
monograph of Wilhelm Stekel appeared in 1921 on the telepathic dream, a year
before Freud's initial paper (1922) appeared. Stekel's emphasis on the role of
strong emotions and the facilitating influence of sleep - along with Freud's
emphasis on the possible interpretation and transformation of telepathic
content in the dream - laid the groundwork, despite the desultory and
controversial reports that characterized the psychoanalytic literature of the
twenties and thirties, for the upsurge of interest in the forties. Ehrenwald
(1942, 1948) and Eisenbud (1946, 1947) were the leading writers at the time,
with supporting contributions from Meerloo (1964), Pedersen-Krag (1947),
Servadio (1956), Ullman (1959), and others. A comparison of clinical material
containing presumptively telepathic dreams led to a number of practical as well
as theoretical formulations concerning the conditions for their occurrence,
their dynamic significance, and the light they shed on underlying character
structure. Much of what emerged validated the earlier speculations of Stekel,
Freud, and the handful of others who were impressed with telepathic material
coming up in the course of analysis. These contributions have been reviewed
elsewhere (Ullman, 1974a, 1974b) and will be briefly summarized here and
illustrated by clinical material from the author's experience. Eisenbud
emphasized the way in which telepathy served unconscious needs and in general
its connection with repressed material. He made explicit use of the telepathy
hypothesis in his therapeutic work and argued that it both extended and
validated psychoanalytic theory. There was general consensus among writers on
the subject of the role of transferential and countertransferential factors as
facilitating mechanisms for telepathic transfer, with the most frequently cited
dynamism being the transitory withdrawal of interest or attention from the
patient on the part of the analyst. Situations often arose, according to
Eisenbud, in which more than one patient at a time was involved in a telepathic
interchange. Fodor (1942) and Coleman (1958) also described telepathic effects
spreading beyond the dyadic relationship of therapist and patient. Eisenbud
pointed to an abundance of telepathic material from a wide range of patients,
whereas Ullman and Ehrenwald found patients with obsessive and schizoid
structures more likely to report dreams that appeared to be telepathic.

Ehrenwald
carefully and methodically evolved a theoretical structure to help contain and
articulate the variety of psi effects that occurred in the clinical setting and
to relate these effects to the larger issues of psychopathology in general and
schizophrenia in particular. His own views appear at the end of this Part IV.

Schwarz's
views on psi likewise appear later in Part IV.

Ullman
emphasized the frequency with which telepathic content appeared in dreams. of
patients whose affective ties to others were weak and tenuous and in whom the
telepathic maneuver seemed to be a way of knowing about a significant figure
without having to assume responsibility for knowing. It was as if an anonymous
listening device had been perfected as a kind of psychic barometer to monitor
the degree of trust and safety these patients could allow themselves to feel in
the situation in which they found themselves. Intercurrent anxieties
experienced by the analyst removing him momentarily from affective contact with
the patient often triggered telepathic events. This is well illustrated in the
clinical material offered below. In addition, Ullman felt that both, need and
interest on the part of the analyst favored the occurrence of telepathy in a
way perhaps somewhat analogous to the formal experiments that reveal how
experimenter bias pro and con can influence ESP results. Ullman also felt that
once a psychotic reaction set in, this level of psi contact appeared to recede
but the fact of its having existed as a real event in the life of the patient
may have been in part responsible for the degree to which his overt symptomatology
and his preoccupations center about thought-transference, reading the minds of
others, having his own mind read or influenced by others, etc. Formal
experiments with psychotics (e.g., West, 1952, Zorab, 1957) appear to support
the thesis that psychotics have no special ESP ability, although Humphrey
(1954) obtained highly significant results with a small group of
schizophrenics.

Aside
from the elucidation of the dynamics of psi in the clinical setting, an effort
was made to define the criteria for assessing a dream as presumptively
telepathic with regard to the life of the therapist. In essence these were: (a)
that the crucial elements in the dream having a bearing on the life of the
analyst be unusual, at least in regard to the frequency with which they were
apt to turn up in dreams; (b) that a close temporal relationship exist between
the dream and the corresponding events in the life of the therapist; (c) that
the patient could have had no normal access to the significant information he
incorporated into his dream, nor could he have inferred any of it from his,
day-to-day contact with the therapist; and (d) that the telepathic elements
depicted in the patient's dream be dynamically meaningful in the context of the
therapeutic exchanges going on at the time.

Despite
these guidelines, the judgment as to whether a dream of a patient is
presumptively telepathic or not remains a subjective one and as such subject to
debate and differences of opinion, as has in fact been the case (Elks, 1947).
It is perhaps for this reason that the weight of clinical evidence alone, even
combined with the appeal of such authority as Freud (in terms of interest) and
Jung (1963) (in terms of commitment), never exerted much influence in changing
to any recognizable extent the general lack of interest in and level of
suspicion about psi events in the clinical setting. Despite these realities,
the fact is that when one is at the receiving end of a dream which fulfills all
of these criteria there is often the additional gut-level criterion of
experiencing something uncanny.

The
following series of dreams of a patient undergoing analysis illustrate some of
the points under discussion. The dreams which are to be considered occurred in
the course of a week in the analysis of a severely compulsive and withdrawn
individual. She was a 29-year-old college teacher, the mother of one child, who
entered into analysis in October 1947 because of increasing estrangement from
her husband and general unsureness about what her feelings were. Although
possessed of high ideals of motherhood, household responsibilities weighed
heavily on her. Most of her drive lay in the direction of an intense interest
in the history of music, the subject which she taught, as well as in a lively
interest in history in general. She looked back on her marriage of eight years
as having occurred in a spirit of romantic rebellion. She was overwhelmed at
first by the brightness and precocity of her husband. The impact of his
aggressive, impulsive, and often erratic personality set the stage for a
gradual but pronounced withdrawal on her part with increased reliance on
interests outside the marriage. She disparaged the feminine role and often felt
extremely competitive toward her husband. She felt blocked in terms of using
her specialized knowledge in any creative way and was often intolerant and
jealous of the creative efforts of others, including her husband. Attitudes of
rigid self-denial, almost to the point of asceticism, operated compulsively,
interrupted sporadically by transient periods of excessive self-indulgence in
the form of short-lived but highly charged extramarital affairs. In relation to
her friends and colleagues she characteristically assumed the role of
confidante and father confessor, a role in which she was acutely aware of the
neurotic difficulties of others but totally at a loss in evaluating her own
problems.

The
family grouping included an older brother. The lines were quite sharply drawn,
the mother maintaining a more affectionate relationship with the son while the
patient remained the father's favorite. This favoritism, expressed as it was
through overprotective and over-indulgent attitudes, gave rise to mixed and
often confused feelings in the patient, The patient was bluntly derogatory in relation
to her mother, whom she regarded as hypocritical and stupidly conventional.
Following a stormy adolescence the shy, inhibited behavior she exhibited as a
child gave way to a compulsive rebelliousness and the rejection of most of her
former values. In college she had disdain for what she considered the more
juvenile campus activities. She preferred to associate with older, more
sophisticated girls. She was popular and always had an intimate circle of
friends. In recalling this period of her life there were no clear feelings of
happiness or unhappiness. The dominant feeling, then as in later years, seemed
to be an intense, although somewhat curiously detached interest in and
preoccupation with the many new intellectual horizons opening up to her. In short,
she found life "interesting" but was more deeply touched by ideas
than by people. Her interest soon centered in music and, more specifically, the
history of musical forms. She achieved some recognition for her knowledge in
the field and soon after her marriage obtained a teaching position on a college
faculty.

The
patient came to analysis with a defensive structure that was relatively intact.
She experienced little overt anxiety and, aside from some underlying vague but
persistent feelings of dread and foreboding, she felt at a loss as to where and
how to tackle her problems. Early resistances took the form of subtle efforts
to embroil the therapist in discussions of the theoretical aspects of the task
at hand and attempts to maintain a thoroughly objective and detached view of
her own problems. There was a fascination with the symbolism and form of her
own neurosis along with a profound lack of awareness of herself and the
implications of her illness. Hidden by compulsive self-effacement and retreat into
anonymity, she had an unrelenting need to play a unique and ambitious role in
life. In dreams depicting the analytic situation she was usually in the role of
a passive onlooker with the analyst portrayed either as an all-powerful
threatening figure or as weak and ineffectual. The underlying picture was that
of extreme cynicism and despair, a blocking out of ail assertive impulses, and
profound withdrawal, precariously balanced by the exploitation to the fullest
of rich intellectual resources through which some feeling of mastery was
maintained. As might be surmised, this push to intellectual mastery, so
outstanding a characteristic of her everyday activity, constituted the first
real problem to be dealt with in the analysis. This came out most glaringly in
relation to her handling of her own dreams, where almost a ruminative delight
occurred over, their form and structure and the symbolism involved, all of
which served as substitutes for any genuine spontaneous reactions to the dream
elements. Handled in this autistic fashion, the dream lost its potential to
make the unknown more known. The more colorful and imaginative the dream, the
less real meaning it held for the patient. At the time of the occurrence of the
dreams to be described below there had not yet been full clarification of these
attitudes. It was felt that before genuine interpretive efforts could be
successful, full awareness of these attitudes would have to be established.
This is a significant point, inasmuch as the function of these attitudes, well
concealed behind a great interest in the dreams and a profusion of them, was
actually in a sense to detonate the dream in terms of its analytic
possibilities while at the same time providing a relatively safe medium for the
patient.

There
was one loophole in her character armor which did make for beginning analytic
inroads. She had anxiety lest someone discover the fact that she was under
analysis. This was practically the only anxiety she experienced. The undue
precautions she would be forced to take soon helped make the patient aware of
the irrational quality involved in the reaction. This led to an opening up of
basic attitudes toward the analysis and a beginning awareness that she regarded
it as a special confessional where her great need to remain uninvolved and
anonymous - the passive onlooker on her dreams - could go unchallenged. In
corroboration of this there were disproportionate fear reactions over any
slight psychosomatic disturbances that occurred from time to time, the fear
being connected more with the possibility of their occurrence than their actual
significance. Although movement had been slow; the setting at the time of the
occurrence of the telepathic dreams, approximately six months after the
inception of the treatment, was one in which a definite positive response had
been elicited to the analysis, and with this, a great real interest in herself
and a spark of real faith in the procedure.

First Dream. On Monday morning, April 26, 1948, the
patient presented the following dream which had occurred on awakening the
previous morning:

I was at a music class. It was a practical
music class, not one dealing with the history of music. The room was clear. It
was large and dark. It seemed like an elementary school classroom with high
ceilings. The only light came from above. You were the music teacher who came
in to give the class (of girls) music criticism - as music teachers do. There
was a sense of real help, not a sense of being lectured at. There were a few
words here and there in re content of the work which was unclear, but the
general feeling was one of being helpful, soothing and honest and gentle. And
then I awakened.

Associations. The patient discussed two men, both of whom
stood in authority relations to her. The previous session had been devoted to a
discussion of certain secret sources of satisfaction. Diaries were the first
indirect and hidden outlet. Clandestine sexual affairs and an intense
idealization of her own child also served this purpose. She spoke of a rabbi
she had seen recently - a man who was very learned and had a great zest for
life. Beneath the admiration she professed was a subtle disparagement.
Significantly, although she expected him to be very formidable he proved to be
rather kindly. His limitations had to be clearly defined by her so that he
could be properly categorized. She also spoke of a music teacher whom she
likened to her husband and described as an aggressive and impulsive individual.
He, too, produced an overwhelming first impression on her only to lead later to
disillusionment. One feature common to both men was their exhibitionism and
need to impress others.

It was
the first time that she had dreamt of the analyst in a kindly light. The
contrast between this and the derogatory thoughts that flooded her mind was
quite striking. She undoubtedly felt threatened, but at the same time some
relief at the encroachment in the previous session of affect-laden material. In
the dream there was a simple and genuine expression of gratitude to and
appreciation of the teacher. The conscious derogatory associations seemed to
crowd in, in an effort to block off the recognition of these positive
attitudes.

Second Dream. During this session the patient presented a
second dream which occurred on awakening the same day. She said that she had
had a very bad night and had suffered from insomnia, a state of affairs most
unusual for her. She said she could not remember ever before being this
unrelaxed at night:

Mr. E. , who was some kind of instructor,
came to the house to demonstrate a new camera gadget. His gestures were very
clear. There were people in our living room. It was a meeting or a social
group. He went to the hall closet and took out a large wooden box. He lifted up
the cover and took out a camera (our own) very slowly and deliberately. I was
very conscious of him opening the closet door and of hoping that the closet
would be neat so that I would not be embarrassed before my friends. I was
conscious of the people's admiration of the box and the way the closet was
kept. I said this was a box my husband had sent back from Germany. Then Mr. E.
made his point by demonstration. He looked through what seemed to be a
stereopticon lens (a very special kind of lens) into the street below. There
was a factory or warehouse there and people were leaving to eat. They were
white-collar workers rather than factory workers. The picture was black and
white and unusual because it was three-dimensional. The lens could make you see
things miles away that could not be seen with the naked eye. He focused on a
hatless man who was followed by many people. Mr. E. also compared this with the
picture of an inert figure, either a dead body or that of a drunk lying on the
ground and the people passing him by callously. Mr. E. demonstrated this great
device. You could really see people's emotional reactions with it. The man was
moved by what he saw. There was a slight twitching of his facial muscles and
the people around him were reacting to him.

Association. Mr. E. was identified with the analyst. The
patient said the gadget seemed to reflect more than meets the eye. She had been
working with slides on the night before the occurrence of the dream, preparing
to give her course in the history of music. The idea of "seeing more than
meets the eye" she related to the analysis. She then spoke about the
anxiety she had had in bed, but could not pin it to anything - there had been
reluctance to come to the session which the patient explained on the basis of
her son's illness. The dream itself was not clear in relation to her
associations and no interpretation was given.

Before
considering the telepathic possibilities I want to review my activities on the
Sunday immediately preceding the day on which the two dreams were presented. I
had been invited to present a paper on telepathy and analysis before a group of
psychiatrists on May 6, 1948. The members of this group had a common interest
in the subject and several previous papers had been read. Approximately two
weeks after the May 6th meeting I was scheduled to present a case at a clinical
seminar at the New York Medical College. I had decided to utilize material from
the same patient for the two occasions, omitting the telepathic features in the
later presentation. The patient, of course, had no inkling of either meeting.

I began
the preparation for the paper on telepathy on Sunday, April 25, 1948, the
Sunday alluded to above. In reviewing the case I noted that I had earmarked
eight dreams scattered over the six-month interval since the inception of the
patient's analysis as having telepathic possibilities. It was around these
dreams that I hoped to base the presentation. It was a curious twist that it
was just this patient who was so secretive in her approach to analysis whose
dreams were to be brought out into the open. Personal facts had to be disguised
sufficiently to prevent recognition without detracting from their cogency.

Several
thoughts occupied my mind as I read over the material. Here was a field I had
long been familiar with and interested in, but I had never before gotten down
to the task of serious or recordable research efforts. It was also to be my
first analytic presentation outside the sheltered academic atmosphere. Although
there was common ground in terms of interest in the implications of
parapsychology for psychiatry, my own analytic approach, strongly influenced by
the "culturalists," differed markedly from those of my more orthodox
colleagues. Two excellent and convincing papers had already been given before
this group dealing with telepathic occurrences inpatients under treatment. All
of these ruminations contributed to a let-down feeling as I looked over the
eight dreams I had on hand. Viewed at some distance from the time of their
actual occurrence, they carried less emotional impact than they had at first. I
had neglected to record in detail my own activities and introspections which
might have had important corroborative value. The difficulties in convincingly
eliminating chance and other possibilities seemed more formidable than ever.

On this
first occasion of my actual evaluation of the dreams as a group, I noted that
four of the eight dreams had occurred over weekends and were presented by the
patient at her Monday session. She also had sessions on Wednesday and Friday.
The telepathic feature of seven of the eight dreams seemed to be initiated by
unusual occurrences in my own life. It may be that the weekend, providing
greater opportunity for out of the routine events, made for the greater Monday
frequency. At any rate, somewhat disappointed in the material I had collected,
I had the hope, perhaps born out of some measure of desperation, that the
Monday frequency would recur and that fresh material would be forthcoming for
the presentation two weeks hence. The following day a series of dreams was
initiated, two of which have already been given, which more than filled the
bill, so much so that I discarded all eight of the dreams I had originally
planned to discuss and limited my presentation solely to the dreams the patient
brought to analysis during the first two sessions following the Sunday in
question.

There
was one other train of events occurring on that Sunday that I wish to
establish. Before I began the preparation of the case I recalled an obligation
to collect some data that I had, dealing with the early days of the New York
Society for Medical History. I had these data in a closet, that was made up of
two separate divisions, one locked and the other unlocked. Not having the key
with me I opened the unlocked section and looked for the papers, but without
success. My eye did catch sight, however, of a large wooden box with many small
built-in compartments. I had had this box made while stationed in France during
World War II for the storage of microfilm and subsequently mailed it back home
to my wife. I had not been at this closet for many months and the sight of the
box brought back many memories.

Bearing
in mind the account given of my own activities that Sunday, certain
correlations with regard to the two dreams the patient presented the next day
can now be brought to light. Although a prolific dreamer, she had presented no
previous dreams involving lecturing, classrooms, or demonstrations - this
despite her own experience as a teacher. Standing alone, the first dream is of
no telepathic significance. Taken in conjunction with the second dream,
however, we have a situation in which the following specific points of
correlation can be drawn:

(1) The
setting of the first dream in a classroom and the second in a living-room. My
concern with two presentations - one to be held in a classroom and the other in
a more informal and social atmosphere of a colleague's waiting room.

(2)
Both dreams involving a figure readily identifiable as the analyst - in the one
case as an instructor and in the second case as a demonstrator.

(3) The
temporal relationship of the two dreams to my preparation the day before.

(4) In
the second dream a closet was of importance to the patient. A closet had been
for a brief time the focus of my own attention.

(5) The
dream involved the removal of a large wooden box from the closet. Seeing the
wooden box in my own closet gave rise to a transient reverie.

(6) The
box was one the patient's husband had sent back from Germany during the war. My
box was one I had sent back from France during the war.

(7) In
the dream the box was associated with a camera contained within. The box I had
was used for storage of microfilm.

(8) In
the dream the demonstrator made his point by means of a very special kind of
lens - a stereopticon lens (an image not too far removed from the contemplated
demonstration of the unique character of telepathic communication).

(9) In
the dream, stress was placed on the unusual quality of the picture - it was
three-dimensional - one could see things miles away - you could really see
people's emotional reactions (again an image very suggestive of and a symbolic
portrayal of the penetrating qualities of telepathic perception).

These
points of correlation suggested the reasonable possibility of telepathic
factors operating in relation to the dreams. What made for even greater
conviction was the light this hypothesis shed on certain aspects of the
analytic situation at the time. The unexplained anxiety and insomnia may have
stemmed from a telepathic sensing of the contemplated presentation, which would
constitute an uncontrollable threat to her persistent and compulsive need for
secrecy and concealment. One may speculate as to yet another source for the
anxiety. One of the most rigid and deep-seated of her characterologic
difficulties was the compulsion to yield uncritically to the needs of others
with no effective efforts at self-assertion. In the particular situation at
hand, unwittingly and unknowingly on both our parts, she was confronted with
the very compelling need of mine, telepathically sensed, for more and better
material and a reliance on her to come through with it. The dreams may then
have been her effort to fill the bill and the anxiety with regard to them
caused by a fear that she might fail. I might mention in this connection that
in the following session two days later she reported a dream which was much
more spectacular from a telepathic standpoint and at that time there were no
traces of anxiety or distress.

In the
first dream the portrayal of the analyst in a warm, friendly light, with
implications of gratitude and good feeling, seemed rather significant inasmuch
as it was the first time such feelings had come through in a dream. The
explanation previously indicated did not seem enough to account for it. If
telepathy did occur, some further speculations are in order. The needs of the
actual analytic relationship constituted such an overwhelming threat to this
patient's techniques of withdrawal that from the very beginning there was
frustration, withdrawal, and smoldering resentment. At the one point where the
analyst's needs were extracurricular, so to speak, and evolving out of
strivings of his own that had no direct bearing on the welfare of the patient,
it is here that a startling change occurred: she complies magnificently and for
the first time the analyst is seen as a nonthreatening and friendly figure. In
fact, the entire situation is exploited to the hilt and all the dramatic and
exhibitionistic possibilities of the presentation situation are enjoyed to the
fullest. Here successful compliance with my needs could be accomplished in
absolute safety for the patient; the sordidness uncovered by the gadget
described in the dream is for display before a group and not likely to be handled
in the more personal and therefore more threatening analytic situation.

Third Dream. In introducing this dream, which occurred on
Wednesday morning, April 28, 1948, the patient stated:

This morning I had a dream full of action. I
was watching it like a movie. I was sitting on a park bench. Next to me is a
tall, well-groomed dame, not pretty, kind of British, attractive and competent.
In her forties. She asked me whether I saw her sister come flying past. She
[the sister] was seven feet tall. Then there was a sense of a long, skinny,
bony - somewhat comical - body plunging through the air as I turned around. I
stood on the opposite side of the street observing a hotel front. It had huge
plate-glass windows. Very large and well-cleaned. I am trying to think of the
family name of this woman. It was Brain or Braintree. There was a man, Basil
Rathbone, who looked like her brother. He opened the window, but as he did it
the upper part of the window fell, so that whether you raised it or lowered it
you were imprisoned. At another window there was another sister with curly
crisp hair, going through the same horrifying efforts at trying to get out.
There was a pane of glass between that person and the outside. These people
were trying to jump and were frustrated. Possibly they were in danger of fire.
Out of the entrance of the hotel I saw this blonde dame, well-groomed. As I
looked over to a lower story window there was a child who was an exact replica
of this woman. This was the gimmick. They could be released because this woman
showed that she was well equipped to care for the child. A policeman came and
opened the window letting the child out, and the child effected the escape of
the others. It was like a movie plot which somehow involved the whole family. Then
the scene changed to a roadhouse. Basil Rathbone was the proprietor. He had
imprisoned in his house an old man that he claimed was the bad guy. I knew he
was a good guy. Then a young guy walks out and says 'My name is Rubins.' This
has a liberating effect, as if I had been vindicated. The name seemed an
anachronism, since the other names were more or less Victorian.

Associations. The patient spoke about a young musician
friend of hers with white hair, and said the Rubins character reminded her of
him:

The dame reminds me of a Virginia Woolf
character. She could be a sister of Basil Rathbone. He was the long, lean
British character - the traditional villain. When I was younger I would seek
out these movies. Virginia Woolf was my great love in literature. I feel this
has nothing to do with me.

Further
associations brought out her antipathy toward women who are well-groomed, women
who accept a conventional feminine role. They are placed in the same category
as her mother, as women who allow themselves to become decorative objects. She
would rather die than be like that. She feels that her husband victimizes weak
women.

In
relation to her friends who are neurotic she often plays the role of the happy,
normal girl.

The
dream touched on her attitudes toward her child, attitudes which had previously
been explored to a limited extent. It was as if she admired her child from a
distance and secretly idealized him. Occasionally this facade broke down under
the pressure of sporadic uncontrollable rages against the child and then guilt
and anxiety would be released. How this fitted in with the dream was not clear
and the accompanying associations were too shallow to permit of further
interpretive work. The other features of the dream produced no further
associations.

The
following events in my own life are set down for consideration in the light of
the patient's dream:

On the
evening preceding the occurrence of the patient's dream (Tuesday) I had an
appointment with Miss M., a friend of mine who occasionally acted as my
secretary, to dictate the paper. I planned to give. Some time back she had been
a patient of mine for a brief period because of difficulties stemming from an
underlying compulsive character structure. She had developed an interest in
parapsychology, but had a very critical eye toward all alleged paranormal
events and was skeptical and cautious in her approach to them.

Miss M.
and I had supper together and then we walked over to my office a few blocks
away. In doing so we passed a movie theatre. Being in an escapist mood I
half-jokingly, half-seriously, suggested leaving the work and enjoying a good
movie. But Miss M. kept steadfastly to the job at hand and added that as a rule
she did not enjoy movies anyway. A few moments later we passed by an apartment
house and my eye was caught by the unusual front of the structure, The front
was made up almost completely of two huge panes of glass and the entire
interior of the lobby was visible. It was so striking that I called Miss M. 's
attention to it.

At the office
I proceeded first with the dictation of another case - that of a very disturbed
young woman in the early months of pregnancy whose illness centered about
potentially destructive trends toward herself and the unborn child. Later on in
the evening Miss M. asked a question pertaining to a situation such as this,
namely, if the patient went through with the pregnancy and had the child would
nature come to her rescue in the sense of actual motherhood's causing her
attitudes toward the child to change in a more favorable direction.

I then
proceeded with the dictation of the paper, again wondering how material of this
order would strike someone whose interests ran along the more disciplined lines
of laboratory investigation.

Next, I
wish to establish the following facts relative to Miss M. The words tall,
well-groomed, British, competent, and attractive all fit very closely. Allowing
for the use of exaggeration in the dream - she was 5 feet 8 1/2 inches tall and
was in her late twenties at the time, rather than 7 feet tall and in her
forties - the description is a fairly good one. I asked someone who knew Miss
M. casually to submit a /brief description of her to me in writing, without
imparting my real motive for making the request. The following description was
given:

Miss M. is a slender person about 5' 8"
tall, narrow boned, with sharp clean lines, vivid coloring with her red hair
and bright lipstick, and a definite sense of style and distinctive form in
dress and manner. Her dark eyes are sharply bright, with a tense, penetrating
look at times as if she had strong feelings about almost every stimulus
confronting her, and her lips are often pursed as she speaks, in a way
suggesting both control, caution, and reflectiveness about what she says. But
the rhythms of her speech are not even, as this might suggest, but strongly
punctuated or cadenced, with a marked rise and fall of inflection and a
colorful quality enriched by her low, sometimes throaty, generally resonant
voice, and upper-class enunciation. There are often quite sharp accents, even
little explosions of speech, interspersed with stretches that sound like music.

Other
important facts in relation to Miss M. include the following:

Miss M.
's sister did make a fatal suicidal leap from her apartment window. This
occurred very soon after the termination of what was supposed to have been a
successful three-year analysis.

Miss M.
has often remarked how much I resemble her brother.

Her
sister was an ardent Virginia Woolf fan.

A man
named H. , Miss M. 's fiancé, died at approximately the same time as her
sister, of a brain tumor. He was under analysis at the time and the tumor and
its manifestations had been overlooked and then interpreted as purely
psychogenic in origin.

Miss M.
, when subsequently informed of the dream at the time of its incorporation into
my paper, wrote me as follows:

This is terribly far-fetched, but the name
'Brain' makes me think of H., who died at the same time as my sister did, of a
brain tumor. He is, so to speak, my second reason for distrusting analysis -
for reasons you already know about (an allusion to the unfortunate sequel to
her sister's analysis).

Thus,
in the case of two people very close to Miss M. , tragic outcomes occurred
which were more than incidentally related to analysis. In a postscript to the
above note Miss M. adds:

P. S. Tuesday night I dreamed my cat jumped
out of a window in the fortieth story of a strange building. It was awful and I
told Dorothy [a friend] about the dream Wednesday A. M. She reminded me about
this.

The
striking feature about the patient's third dream is that the majority of the
dream elements seemed to have more of a direct bearing on events relating to
Miss M. and myself than to herself: She was completely at a loss as to how to
deal with the dramatic events in the dream dealing with the suicide,
imprisonment, etc. Some of the tallying points in this telepathic steal have
already been alluded to. Not resting content with a mere description of a
person she has never met, the patient goes on to probe two most intimate and
painful areas and with unerring accuracy describes the tragic fate of Miss M.'s
sister and then struggles with associations around the word "brain"
in connection with this woman and someone else close to her. Having successfully
established herself as a telepathic subject by virtue of the first two dreams,
she then goes on to compete more openly and somewhat maliciously with a person
whom I held in high esteem. Her flagrant telepathic explosions make a mockery
of the caution and reserve that Miss M. displayed toward parapsychological
matters. All three characters in this drama are depicted as trapped - the
patient, Miss M., and myself. Identifying with the figure of the child, she
indicates at one and the same time her own potential for escaping from the
shackles of illness and makes use of it as an expression of her own superiority
over Miss M., who not only has no child of her own but who asks naive questions
about the mother-child relationship. The analyst is dealt with in no more
kindly fashion. I am depicted as a villain whose liberating influence exists
only by grace of my own analysis. The name of the person I had locked up in my
house sounded suspiciously like the name of my analyst at the time - Dr.
Robbins. The patient's allusion to the name Rubins as being anachronistic may
stem from her awareness that an event presented as synchronous should have been
separated in time, namely, my own analysis and hers. (The likelihood here is
that she came by the knowledge of Dr. Robbins' name through normal channels. )

There
were also similarities in the dreams of the patient and Miss M. occurring that
Tuesday evening: in both cases bodies were hurtling through the air out of
apartment house windows. In Miss M.'s case, her own dream was so vivid and
disturbing that she went out of her way to relate it to a friend. There is one
other bit of evidence in support of a telepathic rapport between Miss M. , the
patient, and myself that centered about an incident occurring several months
before. One evening my wife became quite ill in a rather sudden and abrupt
fashion. The following morning both the patient and Miss M. had dreams
depicting the illness and the setting in which it occurred.

At the
end of the recital of the dream the patient unwittingly showed her hand. She
stated quite bluntly: "All this has nothing to do with me." Although
it has been my experience that patients often discredit dreams or feel blocked
as far as associations go, this kind of definitive disavowal in someone who has
worked effectively with dreams is not usual.

That
this material may be significant from a parapsychological standpoint obviously
rests on factors other than the determination of mathematical probability. That
it is, is subjectively inferred from and supported by the following:

(1) The uniqueness of the dream elements
involved - as in this case the idea of a third dimension, the stereopticon
lens, the body flying through the air.

(2) The time interval in relation to the
events in the therapist's life - in each of the dreams discussed, the reality
events occurred during the day or evening preceding the dream.

(3) The number of points of correlation
between the dream elements and the reality events.

There
is one other factor which may prove valuable in the comparison of telepathic
dreams with nontelepathic dreams and that centers about the differences in the
patient's response. In this case the patient did more work with nontelepathic
dreams; they were more meaningful to her. Telepathic dreams often stumped her
and evoked characteristic remarks concerning their strangeness to her.

Fourth Dream (December 1, 1948). On another occasion, later that year, an
within a week of the time I made another presentation to a psychiatric group,
the patient presented another dream involving someone standing in relation to
me giving an unusual demonstration.

This morning I underwent some kind of
phenomenal feeling. I was sort of disturbed because I couldn't grasp it. It was
a dream about my family. It was a flashback to a schoolroom situation. Barry
[patient's brother; a physician] was writing meaningless script on the board
like A and B, scattered like doodling: 'This ain't possible. Yes, this is
significant. Here I've been taking for granted that everything is OK because
the samples on the board are in my father's: handwriting, but my father is
dead. This is very significant. I must remember it. It was scraping rock
bottom. I was standing on bricks. A pictorial translation of the figure of
speech .... .

Associations. The patient spoke about a family situation:

It was quite an ordinary family situation.
All were there although not seen. My brother and myself. The only thing I saw
was Barry with a pointer like I use to demonstrate slides. He was teaching.
Scribbles or doodles. The blackboard was similar to a negative [white instead
of black]. The writing was black on white. It was analogous to Alan's [her
child scribbling. There were letters in combination. All I can remember was A,
B. It was scattered. There was no pattern. Everything was going smoothly until
I had a double-take. Of course there is something wrong. My father is dead.
Then it occurred that this is important. I must remember this for the doctor.

Of
significance in relation to possible psi functioning are the following: the
setting itself in which the patient has the phenomenal feeling of dealing with
something which she could not grasp; the correlation between the schoolroom in
the dream and the presentation in the lecture-room at the college where my talk
was given; the significance of the protagonist's being her brother, who is a
physician; and the description of the script as meaningless and being like
doodling, an image that ties in with the idea of telepathy as something apart
from conscious effort, yet having to do with communication despite the strange
and unfamiliar form in which it appears. The family is all there, although not
seen. This may have reference to the fact that a case history touching on
members of her family was presented. The pointer was used by her brother,
suggesting a demonstration of some sort. The fact that the blackboard was
opposite in color to what would be expected and the writing was black on white
conveys the feeling of dealing with something in an inside-out, or reverse,
fashion. The telepathic maneuver makes things on the "inside"
apparent on the "outside" in a manner that stands in contrast to
ordinary communication.

It is
my impression that the telepathic maneuver comes into play in situations the
demands of which allow for no other type of contact, or make another type of
contact relatively less appropriate. This patient, suffering from an
obsessive-compulsive character structure and torn asunder under the mass of
contradictions that one only finds in the obsessive personality -
contradictions which did not leave her free to express love or hate or any
intermediary expressions of either - was forced into this "extra
dimensional" way of operating from time to time in the analysis. To her it
was appropriate. The questions as to whether functioning at a telepathic level
is ever genuinely appropriate is an important one. Perhaps the telepathic
sensing of injury or death to loved ones at a distance is an example of
telepathy as an appropriate function. Under those circumstances it may serve as
the only way of becoming aware of an important reality. Regarded in this way,
the regressive or atavistic view of telepathy is held up to question. That it
can appear inappropriate, much as any neurotic mechanism is really inappropriate,
there can be no doubt - as illustrated in the example given - but that this is
the whole story is by no means certain. Further speculations along these lines
will have to be held for the future.

Although
the clinical situation, because of the inherent limitations of control and
observation, cannot come up with hard evidence for the reality of the
telepathic dream, it does present a unique and very special kind of opportunity
to get at the nature and quality of the human interaction going on at the time
such events are presumed to occur. The clinical situation differs from that of
the characteristic objective crisis associated with telepathy, i. e., one
coming about external to and apart from the subject. The transactions do not
take place at the high pitch of arousal that accompanies such crises.
Nevertheless, the fact remains that the therapeutic situation is a stress
situation in which the therapist becomes both the stressor - i. e., the one
challenging an existing characterologic status quo - and the source of relief,
a supportive trustworthy significant figure. In a way that is somewhat
analogous to the major crises that characterize anecdotal accounts, therapy
results in a succession of mini-crises of an intrapersonal nature in relation
to which the person of the therapist plays a major role. Dynamically, the
telepathic maneuver appears to be deployed in the interest of transferential
needs - i. e., idiosyncratically generated feelings toward the therapist that
are inappropriate in the present context and hence have to be disowned - or
they surface at times when the patient feels the impact of countertransference
- i. e., the same kind of idiosyncratic and inappropriate feeling developing in
the analyst toward the patient. It is conceivable that if further thought and
observation were given to the operation of psi in the consulting room, more
could be learned of its spontaneous occurrence under other circumstances.
Although explorations of this kind are possible since a much larger number of
analysts have experiences of this kind than one would be led to assume from the
number of instances reported in the literature, the fact of the matter is that
in practice this poses a problem with regard to the degree of self-disclosure
required of the therapist if the patient's telepathic thrusts into his private
life are to be fully and honestly explored. Material that goes beyond-the level
of discretion and comfort simply won't get reported. This is particularly true
in the therapeutic situation where the telepathic maneuver, at least in the
beginning, tends to operate in the interest of maintaining distance, or tends
to display hostile, suspicious, or competitive aspects.

It is
doubtful as to whether material of this kind, despite the most rigorous kind of
handling, can ever constitute a proof of the existence of telepathy. The very
complexity of the situation involved, the intricacies of the relationships
among the many factors brought into play, and the difficulties of dealing with
dream elements on a mathematical basis all bode ill for anyone venturing into
this territory armed with p values and chi squares. If the statistical
evaluations applied in incomparably simpler experimental situations fail to
convince, it seems unlikely that they would be of much service here. Whatever
conviction is generated stems from the fuller interpretation the telepathic
hypothesis often leads to.

The Recent
Past

The
greater general interest in the past few years in parapsychology and the
greater level of scientific interest it has aroused have not in any discernible
measure been reflected in any greater degree of professional activity in this
area on the part of most psychiatrists and psychoanalysts. Eisenbud has
remained actively engaged with the subject both clinically and theoretically.
His recent volume (1970) sums up his clinical experiences with psi in the
psychoanalytic setting and his papers have been devoted to an analysis of the
nature of scientific resistance to the recognition of psi events (1966-67,
1972). This has led him to interpret the stance of scientists as generated
defensively from the basic incompatibility of psi with the scientific outlook.
Eisenbud (1972) postulates a kind of selective inattention to psi events by the
body of science as "the progressive need on man's part to disavow the
immense potentialities for good and
evil of his inner nature, and his need to get further away that early
conception of causality which places him at the center of things" (p41).
What Eisenbud appears to be saying is that it is the very ubiquitousness and
power of psi that appears to be frightening scientists off, holding up as it
does the spector of a return to the primitive's regressive preoccupation with
the omnipotence of thought. Whether or not Eisenbud's thesis is valid concerning
the prevalence of psi and the significant role it plays in the affairs of men
as well as in a more pervasive way helping to maintain an ecological balance
among all living organisms, I think it is fair to say that the scientific
method as we know it has evolved in the course of man's attempt to master
nature as he has come to understand nature outside and apart from himself. We
are only now beginning to forge the tools with which to look at man in his
relationship to nature, which in turn means looking into man himself. We are
apt to discover psi as part of that nature and perhaps, as Eisenbud and others
have suggested, as part of a larger scheme of things.

Experimental
Studies

Another
significant development in recent years has been the effort to induce dream
telepathy experimentally in the laboratory, making use of the rapid eye
movement (REM) monitoring technique to determine the onset and termination of
recurring dream sequences in the course of a night's sleep. A full account of
how this work came into being and of the formal and informal experiments
carried out in the Division of Parapsychology and Psychophysics (formerly the
Dream Laboratory) of the Department of Psychiatry of the Maimonides Medical
Center in Brooklyn is given in a recently published volume (Ullman and
Krippner, with Vaughan, 1973).

Methodology. The formal studies were conducted either with
single subjects over a period of several nights or with a series of subjects
each sleeping in the laboratory for one night. The subjects were volunteers,
some of whom were selected on the basis of earlier successful performances on
screening nights. The subject's sleep was monitored electroencephalographically
and he was awakened at the estimated end of each REM period to report his dream.
An agent or sender spent the night in a separate room attempting telepathically
to influence the subject's dreams by concentrating on the selected target
picture at intervals throughout the night and particularly when signaled that a
REM period for the subject had begun. The target, generally an art print, was
randomly selected by the agent from a pool of targets in opaque, sealed
containers after the subject was in bed. Only the agent was aware of the target
chosen for the particular night and he remained in his room throughout the
night acoustically isolated from both subject and experimenter. The dream
protocols were transcribed from the taped reports. Copies of them, along with
copies of the targets used for any given experimental series, were given to three
independent judges who assessed correspondences on a blind basis. The results
were analyzed using either the Latin-square analysis of variance technique or
the application of the binomial expansion theorem.

Results. From the summer of 1964 through the fall of
1971, 12 formal experimental studies in dreams and telepathy were completed.
Nine of these 12 studies yielded results that were statistically significant,
supporting the telepathy hypothesis: (a) a twelve-night screening study for the
selection of future subjects (Ullman, Krippner, and Feldstein, 1966), (b) a
seven-night study with one subject (Ullman et al. , 1966), (c) an eight-night
replication study with the same subject (Ullman and Krippner, 1969), (d) an
eight-night study with a different subject (Krippner and Ullman, 1970), (e) a
16-session study utilizing hypnosis and dreams (Krippner, 1968), (f) a 16-night
study with four subjects involving differing target conditions (Krippner,
Honorton, and Ullman, 1972a), (g) a study involving hypnotically-induced dreams
(Honorton, 1972), (h) an eight-night study of precognitive dreams with a single
subject (Krippner, Ullman, and Honorton, 1971), and (i) a 16-night precognitive
dream study with the same subject (Krippner, Honorton, and Ullman, 1972b). Three
studies yielded nonsignificant results: (j) another 12-night screening study
(Ullman, 1969), (k) an eight-night study with a single subject (Ullman, 1969),
and (l) a 16-night study with a single subject (Krippner, 1969).

Between
the spring of 1964, when a standard procedure for monitoring the subject's
sleep was adopted by the laboratory, and the end of 1969, 74 pilot sessions
involving one or more agents and a single subject were completed. These pilot
sessions were not part of any formal experimental series but were exploratory
in nature, investigating potential subjects as well as possible useful
techniques and procedures. Equally rigid precautions against sensory leakage
were taken with the pilot sessions as with the experimental sessions. If chance
rather than telepathy had been operating, half of the 74 pilot sessions would
have been "hits" and half would have been "misses."
Instead, the judges awarded scores that produced 52 "hits" and 22
"misses." This distribution is statistically significant (Krippner,
1970).

There
is empirical evidence suggesting that, in some instances at least, forms
contained in the target material come through more clearly and recognizably
than the content itself and that this applies to more complex targets as well
as simple targets where the form itself is the predominant feature. There are
two experimental techniques that may have a possible bearing upon the
perceptual aspect of psi effects as this relates to similarities based on form.
Each of these techniques limits information input, but in different ways.
Tachistoscopic presentations limit exposure in time. Work with the stabilized
retinal image limits information ordinarily collected and maintained through
the play of eye movements about an object under fixation.

There
have been a number of experiments beginning with awakened interest in the Pötzl
phenomenon demonstrating that cues occurring outside of conscious awareness can
produce perceptual illusions and fragmentation of the image. Similar effects
are noted in connection with Evans' (1967a, 1967b) observations on
fragmentation phenomena associated with binocular stabilization. He notes that
under conditions of stabilization when a pattern disappears it does so in parts
and the parts drop out in a nonrandom fashion. He talks of the hierarchy of the
visual system and suggests, as an explanation of the fragmentation phenomena,
that when the information supply is limited, as in stabilization experiments,
not all levels of the hierarchy are activated. As a consequence, only parts of
the pattern are seen to be corresponding to the level of the hierarchy reached.
Evans also notes that characteristic stabilization will fragment after repeated
tachistoscopic exposures.

The
fragmentation of images noted by Warcollier (1938) and Sinclair (1962) in their
efforts to effect the transfer of information at a distance resembles in
remarkable ways the fragmentary percepts obtained through the two experimental
strategies described, particularly with regard to the fragmentation of complex
forms into simpler forms and the emergence of simple forms out of more complex
imagery. On occasion similar forms emerged when similar targets were used by
two different investigators. These findings suggest by implication that the
neurophysiological pathways involved in the processing of psi effects may be
the same as in normal visual perception.

WHERE WE ARE GOING

In
trying to map general directions that may be realizable in the foreseeable
future, perhaps the first question that arises is, "Is parapsychology a
viable science?" The answer, I believe, is a qualified yes.
Parapsychologists have set standards for themselves that match in rigor the
application of the scientific method in other disciplines. The fact that this
has not yet gained them the same measure of respectability and acceptance
accorded those working in other areas hinges on the absence of a repeatable
experiment. This situation, which has prevailed for such a very long time is, I
am afraid, apt to continue for the simple reason that the problems raised are
insoluble in the context of parapsychology as a separate discipline. Stated another way, the problems are
not soluble in the same context - the field of parapsychology - in which they
have surfaced. Their solution will rest not on the continued examination and
measurement of these surface outcroppings, but on an examination of the
complicated network of hidden underground connections weaving psi effects into
the very fabric of natural events. Parapsychologists will have achieved their
goal once other scientists take up the challenge. They can then dematerialize
as parapsychologists and reappear as members of interdisciplinary teams
addressing themselves to the specific remaining mysteries that still exist in
all fields of human endeavor, but this time with the knowledge that psi effects
may play a significant role in the unraveling of these mysteries. This
situation is somewhat analogous to the one in which ethnic minorities find
themselves. They have to adopt an independent stand initially to make the world
aware of their special problems, but paradoxically the long-range solution to
these problems rests not with the maintenance of this separateness, but with
its dissolution in the interest of establishing a brotherhood of man.

There are
signs on the horizon that this indeed is beginning to come about. Whether we
like it or not, the momentum for parapsychological research is outstripping the
efforts of the professional parapsychologists and moving more into the hands of
interested parties and investigators ranging along a very broad continuum of
competence and scientific integrity. Despite the obvious pitfalls and dangers,
this is, to my way of thinking, not only a good thing, but a necessary one. It
represents the first crude approximations of what, hopefully, ultimately will
be a concerted, broad-based interdisciplinary effort, international in scope,
to incorporate the reality of psi effects into man's ongoing effort to explore
and understand the world in which he finds himself in the course of what
appears to him to be his finite existence on earth. It is cause for celebration
rather than resignation.

Does
this imply that the professional corps of parapsychologists should push some
kind of self-destruct button? By no means! Rather, as indicated below, they,
being the ones who have the most specialized knowledge about these unique
effects, must now join with their fellow scientists in the search for answers:
The ground rules for the search, however, have become somewhat more elaborate. The
observer has to be included as a participant in the hard as well as the soft
sciences; the conditions for experimentation have to include the reality of psi
interaction; and because we are now moving into areas where the mental and
physical have come together we will need a variety of specialists working
together to address themselves in interdisciplinary fashion to the problems in
a single discipline.

Coming
down to specifics, what might this mean in the case of psychiatry? What are
some of the enduring mysteries and are they possibly psi-related? There is much
about the major psychoses, particularly schizophrenia, that still eludes us.
Ehrenwald (1948), working in the tradition of earlier psychical researchers,
felt that psi events played a role in the genesis of at least some forms of
schizophrenia (paranoia and catatonia).

Psi
events, by their nature, appear to be able to exert a mental influence, on
energy systems at a distance as well as to transcend ordinary relations to
space and time. I have elsewhere speculated on the possible relevance this
might have with regard to psychosis (Ullman, 1952):

"To understand the unique quality of the
telepathic dream, we have to be aware not only of what is unique about the
dream itself, but also what is unique about the dreamer. Time seems to stand
still for the schizophrenic. Perhaps it may be said that his psychosis begins
at the point where this fiction becomes his reality. The ability to obviate the
changing quality of experience, namely, its temporal aspect, can only be
achieved by an overwhelming effort to break all ties with reality. But this
obviating process, before it leads the individual to take the fatal leap into
the state of absolute timelessness, omnipotence, and psychosis, may leave
traces and side effects which indicate its existence and direction. Telepathic
functioning may be just such an evidential side effect. If time and space are
viewed as static, fixed, and rigid categories, much as containers in which
events occur rather than as reflecting properties of matter, then the dynamism
of telepathy has to be placed outside of time and space and of necessity
outside of our reach.

"It seems to me, if I may be permitted a
further brief excursion into philosophical speculation, that two preliminary steps
may be postulated which, if valid, might help in coping with this difficulty.
The first has to do with the implications of regarding time and space not as
given categories, but rather as abstractions from our experience to express, in
the case of the former, the element of change or unlikeness in our experience
and, in the case of the latter, the element of sameness or likeness in our
experience. Adjustment to experience through time and space as we know them
while it represents the most human and most rewarding way of adjustment in
terms of mastery over nature, does not shed light on how these aspects of
experience are dealt with in the case of those who have forsaken human goals
and needs. This may have some relevance to the situation in borderline psychotics
who, in coming close to a total surrender of the possibility of fulfilling
their human needs, experience at the same time a disruption of their ability to
experience the temporal and spatial aspects of reality in a human way. Whatever
deeper level is opened up as a result of this disruption is at this point a
matter of conjecture. Telepathic functioning provides us with a glimpse,
sufficient to confirm its existence, but too evanescent to reveal much
information about it" (p12-3).

These
thoughts were reemphasized two decades later (Ullman, 1973), when I suggested
that

"we may have to reconceptualize our
understanding of both of these psychoses (schizophrenia and manic-depressive
psychosis) in terms of the spatial and temporal aspects of character
organization. There has been some tendency in recent years to merge the two
psychoses, but I think that symptomatically, temperamentally, and perhaps
constitutionally they remain distinctive. The manic-depressive maintains
affective ties to the world, but cannot modulate them. The schizophrenic
deploys his affective capacities in the service of maintaining distance between
himself and the world. The schizophrenic is future-oriented in terms of his
unrelenting vulnerability to unpredictable threats to and assaults upon his
isolation. The manic-depressive is past-oriented in the depressive phase,
relating in terms of past failures, and present-oriented in the manic phase,
relating in terms of a sense of unreal successes.

"Time plays a different role for each in
still another way. Magical thinking and omnipotence of thought play a key role
for the schizophrenic. Normal processes, extending in time, have to be bypassed
to arrive at magical solutions. Real time, in a sense, doesn't exist for the
schizophrenic. This is in contrast to the manic-depressive for whom time is
either retarded or accelerated, depending on the phasic variation he is
experiencing. In the depressive phase, there is a severe limitation in the
contextual field and time is retarded. In the manic phase, there is a
tremendous expanse in the contextual field and time is accelerated. In the
depressive phase the past overshadows the present and the future, and in the
manic phase the present overshadows both the past and the future. Is this
difference in orientation reflected in differences in ESP performance? Would
precognition be more apt to be associated with schizophrenia, telepathy or
clairvoyance with the manic psychosis, and retrocognition with the depressive
psychosis? Would other but equally consistent relationships obtain where
compensatory abilities might play a role - i. e. , the schizophrenic sensing
things paranormally in the present in connection with his excessive vigilance
concerning the future?

"Space can be thought of as content, as
context, and in a certain sense as encompassing the qualities of palpability,
endurance, and sameness in contrast to the qualities of impalpability,
elusiveness, and change associated with the concept of time. In this sense the
schizophrenic is time-oriented - the changing aspects of reality are more
important to him than the enduring ones, since it is change and not sameness
nor familiarity that evokes vigilance operations. For the manic-depressive it
is space, context, and sameness that predominate over time and change, since
the manic-depressive, does invest himself in his human context but
unfortunately as an expression of the fantasy either that it cannot change or
that it is changing too fast for him to keep up with.

"This differential weighting of space
and time in the two syndromes might provide potential clues for further
research efforts. Might it not be better to seek effects in the psychological
realm with schizoid individuals and psychokinetic effects with those closer to
the manic-depressive end of the spectrum (and here I would include hysterics)?
In the first case we are testing the limits of the schizophrenic's omnipotence
of thought, his need to know in the service of vigilance operations, and his
preoccupation with the temporal or changing aspects of reality. In the second
case we are testing the limits of the individual whose interaction with the
world about him is much more invested in space, context, bodily and motoric
involvement.

"I have not yet engaged in any
systematic study, but I have developed the clinical impression that from a
psychopathological point of view good ESP performers as encountered in the
clinical situation are on the schizoid side. I haven't had the opportunity to
study sufficient [numbers of] PK performers, but I would offer the speculation
that they fall within the manic-depressive or hysteric syndromes"
(p111-3).

In some
ways the task that confronts us now is to review the work of Myers in the
context of current technological, theoretical, and conceptual trends. Myers'
categories (1903), in somewhat different language, deal with those aspects of
human experience that are possibly psi related. His categories include: Genius;
Personality disorganization; Sleep; Hypnosis; Sensory automatisms; Phantasms of
the dead; Motor automatisms; Trance, possession and ecstasy. If we add to these
drug- and nondrug-related explorations of inner space, we encompass a good deal
of what current investigators are concerned with. There have been remarkable
technological advances in areas likely to have some relevance for psi research
but that haven't been exploited in the interest of psi research or where only
beginnings have been made. Emotions are certainly important as mediators of psi
exchanges. An interesting technique has evolved to translate into a visual form
one's repertory of emotional responses (Clynes, 1973). Might those with similar
profiles be better at psi exchanges? Biofeedback as perfected and applied by
the Greens (Green and Green, 1971), and Brown (1974) holds out the promise of
learning more about internal processes by objectifying them through techniques
of external display.

Lilly
(1972) and Masters and Houston (1966) have been exploring inner space using
both drug- and nondrug-related techniques. Lilly has been writing about it from
a personal. and experiential point of view; Masters and Houston in terms of
strategies designed to liberate creative energies and release untapped
potentials. Fischer (1971) describes himself as a cartographer of inner space
and has charted the major changes of state along an arousal continuum. Ornstein
(1972) calls our attention to the way in which split-brain preparation studies
shed light on the dual nature of our information processing systems, the left
hemisphere being related to language and the linear mode and the right
hemisphere being related to holistic patterning in space and time.

Clinically,
under the leadership of people like Maslow (1964), who talks about peak
experiences, and Assagioli (1965), the founder of "psychosynthesis,"
who talks of height psychology as a modern-day contrast to the depth psychology
of old, man's extended faculties become the focus of the therapist's interest
rather than his pathological heritage.

Some of
these concerns have crystallized as the movement known as "transpersonal
psychology. " Grof (1973), based on his extensive experience with the
psychedelic effects of LSD, has made significant contributions to our
understanding of the transpersonal experience.

Last,
but not least, the explorations in the new territory are not without those
scouts who, armed with the power of abstraction, the mastery of subatomic
physics and the capacity to play with imaginary numbers and hypernumbers, are
attempting to provide theoretical charts capable of both describing and
predicting the properties and limits of subjective space; I refer to the work
of Wigner (1962) and Bohm (1973) in physics and Muses (1972) in mathematics.

The
early founders of the (British) Society for Psychical Research had a strong
antipathy toward what they felt was the materialistic course science had
charted for itself. William James (1896) expressed this sentiment:

Through my slight participation in the
investigations of the Society for Psychical Research, I have become acquainted
with numbers of persons of this sort, for whom the very word Science has become
a name of reproach, for reasons that I now both understand and respect. It is
the intolerance of Science for such phenomena as we are studying, her
peremptory denial either of their existence or of their significance except as
proofs of man's absolute folly, that has set Science so apart from the common
sympathies of the race. I confess that it is on this, its humanizing mission,
that our Society's best claim to the gratitude of our generation seems to me to
depend. We have restored continuity to history [p9].

Perhaps
it has taken all this time - nearly a century - and the evolving of a counter
culture, to turn science around so that we can begin to look through the other
end of the microscope. The observer is now being observed and once that begins
to occur, psi effects are no more mysterious than the existence of
consciousness itself or the nature of the electron.